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The Theatre of Bernard-Marie Koltès and the ‘Other Spaces’ of Translation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Maria Delgado  and
David Fancy
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Abstract

The work of the French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès, although phenomenally successful in continental Europe, has been staged less frequently in Anglo-American theatres; and a major feature on his work in NTQ49 in February 1997, and the publication by Methuen later in the same year of a collection of three of his plays in English translation, brought him only belated recognition in print. In this paper, first presented at a recent gathering in France to mark the tenth anniversary of Koltès's death, Maria Delgado and David Fancy trace the trajectory of a number of his plays through the space of translation, including Roberto Zucco, Dans la solitude des champs de coton (In the Solitude of the Cottonfields), Quai Ouest (Quay West), and Combat de nègre et de chiens (Black Battles with Dogs). Koltès asserted in 1986 that ‘I have always somewhat disliked the theatre because theatre is the opposite of life; but I always come back to it and love it because it is the one place where you can say: this is not life’; and the poetic specificity of his work has posed significant challenges for an Anglo-American theatre culture imbued with actors' identification with character. Relying on testimonials from a variety of directors, translators, and actors, as well as evidence from productions in the UK, Ireland, and the US, the authors, who are both Koltès translators, trace the challenges that have faced English-speaking artists wishing to stage this demanding writer. Maria Delgado is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Queen Mary, University of London, and David Fancy is a freelance director based in Canada who is currently completing a PhD on Koltès's work.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , May 2001 , pp. 141 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

Notes and Reference

For François Koltès. In order to limit the scope of this first comprehensive study of Koltès's translation into English, we have employed the term ‘Anglo-American’ to delimit the geographical scope of our inquiry to Britain, Ireland, the United States, Canada, and Australia. In doing this we understand that we risk invoking a eurocentric prejudice to the study, but hope none the less that this work can serve as a first step towards a more complete map of Koltès's presence in the rest of the English-speaking world. We would like to thank all the directors, translators and performers who have spoken to us about the challenges of staging Koltès's work: Bisi Adigun, Pierre Audi, Suzanne Bourgoyne, David Bradby, Martin Crimp, Kim Dambaek, Andrew Farrell, Jimmy Fay, Alex Johnston, Andrew Joseph, Françoise Kourilsky, Joseph Long, James Macdonald, Robert David Macdonald, Travis Preston, Peter Staves, and Jeffrey Wainwright.

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91. Letter from Peter Staves, April 1998.

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94. Vivis, ‘The Challenge of Translating Koltès: Work on Heritage’, p. 273.

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